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Easy Croaan (rev. 47b) / 34 Stressed Pronouns 196 / 600

34 Stressed Pronouns

Besides the forms of pronouns we have already learned, there are additional,

stressed forms of pronouns. They can be placed to any position in the sentence.

They are mostly optional, used when you want to emphasize them; however, they

must be used with prepositions and conjunctions. Their forms are similar to the

regular, ‘unstressed’ pronouns, but usually a bit longer:

1st & 2nd pers. pronouns in singular

person N A, G DL

1st ja mene meni

2nd ti tebe tebi

refl. — sebe sebi

Bear in mind that Croatian completely distinguishes 2nd person singular and plural,

while English has just you for both.

This example will illustrate their use when stressing objects:

Ana N čeka mene A . Ana is waiting for me.

You cannot join an unstressed pronoun and another word with e.g. conjunction i¨

and – stressed pronouns must be used:

Vidim tebe A i Anu A . I see you and Ana.

Despite the second position of tebe in the sentence above, the unstressed te²

cannot be used, since it cannot be joined with i¨ and with anything else.

When using stressed pronouns (which is not the default option in speech and

writing!) the order of words is more like English:

Želim vidjeti tebe A . I want to see you. ®

There’s the curious third row: A sebe, DL sebi, marked as reflexive. The word sebe is

the emphasized form of se². However, you cannot emphasize every se²: you can

emphasize it only when used in a specific meaning. Consider these sentences:

(1) Brijem se. I’m shaving.

(2) Oni N se vole. They love each other.

(3) Juha N se kuha. The soup is cooking. ®

(4) Vraćam se. I’m coming back.

(5) Zovem se Igor N . My name is Igor.

(6) Igram se. I’m playing.

(7) Bojim se. I’m afraid.

You can emphasize only the se² in the sentence #1, not in others:

brijati

zvati

bojati se

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